Marshall Helmberger

For all the talk by the Trump campaign about the hostility of the mainstream media towards the former president, Mr. Trump has actually been the beneficiary of a remarkable media double standard. That’s particularly true as we perceive his record on the economy versus that of President Joe Biden and, by extension, the economic policies we can anticipate should Vice President Harris win election this November.
A straight comparison of the two president’s economic records is stark. During the four years of Trump’s presidency, the U.S. economy LOST 2.7 million jobs and the unemployment rate went from just above 4.5 percent to 6.4 percent. The gross domestic product actually declined by 2.2 percent and the deficit increased faster than at any time in U.S. history, bar none. On the plus side, the S&P 500 increased by 68 percent during the four years that Trump was in the White House.
Despite a couple bright spots, however, Trump’s economic record was among the worst of any American president in nearly a century. That’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact.
Yet you never hear any of this from the mainstream media, or even from Trump’s critics. That’s because people recognize that Trump’s economic record was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and so an economic record that would otherwise be considered truly dismal, is dismissed as affected by unusual circumstances. We’re told that the only fair comparison of economic records should only consider Trump’s economy prior to the pandemic.
I don’t disagree. My only question to that is, why doesn’t the Biden record get similar consideration by the media? How is it that Biden’s critics aren’t chastised when they point to the bout of inflation that came in the wake of the pandemic? If Trump gets a pass for his truly abysmal jobs and GDP numbers, why doesn’t Biden get similar consideration when it comes to inflation?
While the pandemic began under the Trump administration, its global ripple effects continued well into the Biden administration. Among the most significant were the severe supply shortages and transportation bottlenecks that developed from the economic dislocations caused by the pandemic. Yet Trump and his supporters have relentlessly blamed inflation in the U.S. on Biden’s policies, even though the inflationary spiral that came in the wake of the pandemic was global and systemic in nature, and was much worse in many other countries than here in the U.S.
There were no conceivable economic policies in the early years of the Biden administration that would have kept inflation away from America’s shores, other than policies designed to tip the world economy into deep recession, which would have hurt American families far more than 18 months of moderate inflation.
Trump wants Americans to compare the economy that existed in the early years of his administration, during the period of modest and steady growth that he inherited from President Obama, with the economy under Biden during a period in which the global economy was still reeling from one of the largest shocks in a century. Trump wants his orange compared to Biden’s apple. And, amazingly, much of the media has let him get away with it.
Now that the effects of COVID have mostly faded and economic conditions have returned to some level of normalcy once again, we can truly compare apples to oranges. And what do we see? We see that inflation is back down to the 2-3 percent annual rate where the Federal Reserve likes it and interest rates will likely start coming down next month, which will improve the affordability of home mortgages and auto loans. Unemployment, even after July’s slight increase, is still better than at any time under the Trump administration, job growth has far outpaced anything seen during the Trump years, and GDP growth has been significantly stronger as well. And the S&P is up 45 percent with six months yet to go in Biden’s term. That’s a far cry from the stock market collapse Trump self-servingly predicted would happen with a Biden victory in 2020, and now predicts again if Harris ends up in the White House next year.
In fact, the good economic trends now in place in the U.S. are likely to continue because the majority of the spending authorized by the major legislation signed into law over the past three years, which includes significant public investment in infrastructure and new industry, has only begun to make its way into the economy in real projects. The economic pump, in other words, is well-primed for growth over the next few years, thanks to the Biden administration.
Vice President Harris will mostly continue those policies, and push for a few new initiatives, such as additional funding for affordable housing (which is critically needed) and investigating consumer products companies if they engage in price-gouging. While most of the inflation we saw back in 2022 and 2023 was systemic, there is no doubt that some corporations piled on price increases unnecessarily to pad their profits— and that impacted family budgets.
While Harris’s recent economic announcements weren’t Earth-shattering, they did reflect that she is taking lingering concern about inflation seriously.
Trump, on the other hand, has offered nothing but his usual hyperbolic claims of greatness and of his opponents’ unmitigated incompetence, mixed with his endless complaints about, well, pretty much everything. In his mind, he’s the most persecuted man who ever walked the Earth— literally the world’s biggest victim.
That’s probably better than outlining his actual economic proposals, which represent the most inflationary set of policies ever suggested by an American presidential candidate. Trump is lucky he inherited hundreds of millions of dollars because his understanding of basic economics appears to be remarkably limited. He thinks tariffs are paid by the exporting country, which is completely false. Here in the U.S., those tariffs are paid by companies like Walmart and Target, and they inevitably pass those costs along to their customers. His tariff proposal, which he has now upped to 20 percent on every imported good, would undoubtedly spark an inflationary spiral. That’s just basic economics, and it would impact families all across the country.
Trump also wants a weaker U.S. dollar, which again means imported goods will cost more.
Trump did himself no favors, either, when he lauded Elon Musk’s mass firings of workers at Twitter and implied that companies should be able to fire striking union workers. That’s already led to the filing of an unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board by the United Auto Workers, who, not surprisingly, recently endorsed Vice President Harris.
Trump, of course, has never been much for policy, beyond simplistic sound bites. In the end, however, Americans do want a president who takes the job seriously and thinks strategically about how to address the challenges that so many Americans face. Harris, among the two major candidates, is the only one trying to present a coherent economic path forward, even if she’s been light on the details to date.
Trump, by contrast, can’t seem to express any coherent set of proposals that would stand a chance of containing the cost-of-living for most Americans. He spends his time on the public stage spewing gag-worthy self-aggrandizement mixed with bottomless self-pity, peppered with bizarre takes on sharks, electrocution, or cannibals. If you saw someone walking down a city sidewalk ranting like Trump does at one of his rallies these days, most people would duck in a doorway or cross the street to avoid catching a disease. It’s hard not to be embarrassed for him.